


Oh Seductress, Oh Enchanter

by conflicted



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alpha Keith (Voltron), Alpha Shiro (Voltron), Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Bottom Lance (Voltron), Cuban Lance (Voltron), Cumulous Pidge | Katie Holt, Cussing, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Gay Keith (Voltron), Human Hunk (Voltron), Hunk & Lance & Pidge | Katie Holt Friendship, Hunk & Lance (Voltron) Friendship, I Will Go Down With This Ship, Incubus Lance (Voltron), Insecure Lance (Voltron), Keith (Voltron) is Bad at Feelings, Kidnapping, Lance & Pidge | Katie Holt Friendship, Lance (Voltron) Angst, Lance (Voltron) is a Mess, Lotor is the badguy, M/M, Not Beta Read, Orphan Keith (Voltron), POV Alternating, Pack Dynamics, Pidge | Katie Holt is Savage, Samoan Hunk (Voltron), Sassy Pidge | Katie Holt, Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Sick Character, Socially Awkward Keith (Voltron), Space Uncle Coran (Voltron), This Is Not Going To Go The Way You Think, Werewolf Keith (Voltron), Werewolf Matt Holt, Werewolf Shiro (Voltron)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-06-17 19:06:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15468006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/conflicted/pseuds/conflicted
Summary: In a world where not everyone is quite as they seem, Team Voltron is about to learn a very important lesson about being open and honest with your teammates...ORIn a world where there is more than just one species of human, the other species are trapped facing ridicule and discrimination, and so they opt to keep their identity hidden. When a group of five is trapped in an intergalactic space war they are forced to come face to face with their heritage and what that means for their predicament, and what that means for their relationships with each other.ON HIATUS





	1. A Demon Among Men

Before the Galaxy Garrison I was trapped in a life I wanted to forget. I was the middle child, with three older siblings and three younger, and I was the bastard of the family. My siblings ostracized me and my mother resented me. My eyes, ice blue, stood out against the dark chocolate of my families. They glowed as if showcasing the truth of who I was and what I meant for my family. 

 

Before me, my mother was happily married, three kids and a great marriage. She didn’t work, my father made enough to support their family and she spent all her time caring for their kids and was more in love than anyone else on this planet. Until my father cheated. He got another woman pregnant and left my mother to raise that child with her. He left them alone with no money and no way to get it. He abandoned my mother and his children just to spend his days with this new woman, with this new baby.

 

But they died.

 

There was a fire and half the neighborhood my father lived in burned to ash. Including my father and his new wife. That baby, that bastard child who was the product of adultery, who ruined my mother’s happy marriage and her children's happy life; that child was me. And I survived. My parents had left me and I didn’t have anywhere left to go but back to the woman my father had abandoned. She always told me that it wasn’t my fault what my father did; she wasn’t going to abandon some child just because they were the product of an affair.

 

That changed nothing,  _ nothing _ , for me. Every time she smiled I could see it in her eyes: cold, harsh, cruel, unloved, resentment. She looked at me as if I was a monster but treated me as if I were an angel. Of course, I knew I was a monster. I just wished she would just admit it. Even after she remarried, never admitting my heritage to her new husband, never telling the children they had who I was to them. I was just their big brother, I was the one in the family with the pretty eyes, nothing more.

 

But I had my mother’s eyes. They haunted me.

 

I didn’t only get my eyes from my mother, unfortunately. I got something much,  _ much _ worse.

  
  
  


“Welcome to the Galaxy Garrison, a  _ very _ prestigious preparatory school for only the best minds and bodies of the next generation,” proudly spoke the principal who skipped the formality of introducing himself, “congratulations for making it here.” The Galaxy Garrison… in America… off the west coast… far from Cuba and my family and the looks and the false love and all those brown eyes.

 

Opening the door to my new home I was face to face with grey walls and grey sheets and cement floors and simple metal desks. It was lifeless. Lifeless just as I felt. I set down my ocean blue bag and listened as the Cuban Flag keychain jingled. It was a splash of color in the colorless space and seemed to soak in all of the light. I stared at it, trying to bring my focus away from the headache pounding away at the edges of my temples. “Fuck,” I whispered, grasping at my head as the headache took a sharp turn into migraine territory, pounding against my skull as if trying to break free. The pain was blinding, it crumbled my bones and weakened my muscles, it made me drop with a loud  _ thump  _ to the floor. I let out a guttural groan and pulled my head to my knees, inadvertently rolling myself into a tight ball. I squeezed my eyes shut, desperately trying to make the pain go away only for the pounding to worsen.

 

“Oh my god, are you okay?” Someone asked, their voice scraped against my eardrums like knives. I shook my head slowly, tears prickling the edges of my eyes, and they laid their hand on my shoulder allowing our skin to meet. I could make out how strong he was and his thick calluses spoke of long days of hard work. I could feel the energy pulsing under his skin, warm and kind. Innocent. I turned to face him slowly, first taking in the yellow and orange plaid patterned bag throw haphazardly on the second bed in the room, only to slide my eyes to the worried expression gracing his kind features. His features lit up under the bright blue gaze I laid on him, casting eerie shadows under his eyes and in the dip of his cheekbones. He recoiled the second my eyes hit him; he ripped his hand from my shoulder like I had burned him and his worry was immediately replaced with fear.

 

“Don’t touch me,” I hissed. The glow of my eyes pulsed, lighting up the room in a cold blue light. I staggered to my feet, swaying dangerously. “You shouldn’t touch me,” I whispered. I tried to reign in the feeling of being cornered, the look of a wounded animal surrounded by predators. This boy wasn’t trying to hurt me.

 

I took a deep breath, allowing myself a moment to calm down. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to snap at you,” I could feel the energy radiating through my eyes fade, “I’ve been getting really bad migraines recently, that’s why I collapsed.” I purposely brushed off the subject of what he had just witnessed.

 

He staggered to his feet, struggling to make words and only producing consonances and half letters. “Have you tried the commissary food?” He finally settled on, cocking an eyebrow at me. A friendly change of topic as he moved past the strange first impression I had left on him.

 

“No,” I answered honestly only to turn away again. I rummaged through my bag, not really looking for anything in particular, just waiting for the feeling of his stare to leave the back of my neck. I pulled out trinkets of home, a photo of my family, small toys and made up animals made from pipe cleaners my younger siblings had crafted for me. I smiled gently at them and the memories the small pink and blue creatures held. “The names Lance.”   
  


He sighed, relaxing into the room, and looked away, standing to face his bag too.  “Hunk, nice to meet you,” his whispered trying to dissolve the awkward tension that had befallen us, “what are you here for? I’m an engineer.”

 

“Undecided,” I answered, forcing my usual cocky smirk to shape my lips, “but I intend to be the best.”

 

He turned to look at me with a cocked eyebrow, broad shoulders casting long shadows across the room. Light seeped in through the open window, greyed by thin curtains and darkened by the setting sun. “The best at what?” He raised an eyebrow, testing the waters.

 

“I’ll get back to you on that, big guy,” I pat his shoulder a little rougher than I meant to, “depends on what they assign me to,” and began to unpack. He did the same, flipping the switch of the lamp on the small grey desk to cast a warmer golden light across the room. A gentle smile settled on my face as we worked in a comfortable silence. Maybe ( _ maybe _ ) this wouldn’t be so bad.

  
  


Iverson was soon to be the bane of my existence. He was forever grumpy, cruel, his eyes seemed to steal pieces of my soul. He was the opposite of the kind of person I wanted to spend four hours a day with doing flight simulators… which was, unfortunately, exactly how my schedule worked out. Even worse still, for our simulator group I was the pilot, Hunk was (miraculously) my engineer, and by some deed done by Satan himself (which just as easily could have been Iverson) our communications officer was some grumpy asshole by the name of Pidge Gunderson.

 

“Hunk,” I whisper yelled, violently gesturing for him to come over to me, slightly separated from the third member of our team. He bent down and placed his ear right next to my lips, “I don’t trust him,” I paused and shift my gaze from Pidge to Iverson, “and I certainly don’t like  _ him _ .”

 

He shook his head and stood up straight again, sending Pidge one of his award winning smiles. In response, Pidge cocked an unamused eyebrow but simply brushed it off, opting to just continue not really talking to us. He never talked to us. He never started conversations and always ended them quickly if Hunk or I tried to start one with him, but he had kind eyes and his no-nonsense attitude kept us on track. It was a pros/cons sort of arrangement he had set up with us.

 

“Why don’t you trust Pidge?” Hunk asked when we got back to our dorm, laying back heavily on his bed with his hands resting as pillows behind his head. He didn’t look at me, staring longingly up at the glow stars stuck across the entire spanse of our bedroom ceiling (which was strictly against Garrison Rules and one of my better bad ideas). I watched him for a moment, his kind aura lulling me instantly into a better mood.

 

I settled down on my own bed, pulling my pillow to my chest and leaning back against the wall to stare at the constellations too. I sighed and tucked the pillow under my chin, squishing it against me with my knees. “You’ve noticed that he completely refuses to  _ ever _ talk to us,” something I refused to admit saddened me, “he’s got to be hiding something.” I paused, a brilliant idea seeping slowly into my thoughts from the dark corners of my mind that Hunk warned me to never tred into. A corner that was only beginning to form when I suggested the beautiful stars, one that was a fully formed dimension of truly awful ideas.

 

“Oh no, I know that face. Lance, whatever you’re thinking is a very bad idea and we’re going to end up in a lot of trouble,” Hunk begged, sitting straight up with a bewildered expression on his face.

 

Of course he was right, when is Hunk ever wrong… we did end up in space, light years away from Earth, fighting in an alien space war in giant robotic cats.


	2. Outed by Alien Healing Technology

“He’s been asleep for a while,” came a voice: slender, high pitched, familiar, kind. It was muffled, as if on the other side of glass or, better yet, my ears were stuffed with cotton balls.

 

“Yes, but everyone knows the cryopod can just knock one out in a zip,” exclaimed a second voice, cheerful and loud but equally as muffled as the first.

 

“Yes, but can’t it _wake one up in a zip_ too?” The third voice shocked his senses, the cotton balls were gone, and the glass was falling away. All I could see was the ground rushing to meet my face but my reflexes were too slow and uncoordinated to let me get even a single hand or foot under me. I squeezed my eyes closed, sucking in a deep breath as I prepared my whole body to come into contact with the unforgiving ground. Instead, almost predictably, I was met with warmth and strength, ensuring that I would never feel the kiss of the ground but instead the kiss of a perfectly sculpted chest.

 

“Why is the world so unfair?” I groaned, pressing the palm of my hand into his flawless pectoral and attempting to push myself to standing. Instead I found my knees buckling under me and him effortlessly tightening his grip around my waist to push me harder into his rocks for abs.

 

“You’ve been in there for a while, you’re dumb for trying to walk,” he grunted, his deep voice vibrating under my ear. A blush so red I could feel the heat of it absorb into his shirt stained my cheeks and I smiled shyly up at him.

 

“I see you haven’t missed ab day,” I flirted, flexing my fingers against one of his bulging pecs and the other against the bulge of one of the muscles making up his six pack.

 

“Shut up Lance,” he groaned, pushing me gently to my feet, only removing his hands from my waist once he knew I was stable. I winked at him and he rolled his eyes. “He seems fine to me,” Keith said turning his whole body away from me to look unamused towards Allura and Coran, the only other two people in the room.

 

“I’m going to need to run a few diagnostic checks, that cryopod was broken so I need to make sure he’s completely healed,” Coran chirped, tugging me away from the beautiful male specimen and towards a cloth covered, hospital-like bed on the opposite side of the room.

 

“Broken? You put me in a broken pod? After I almost died for, after I took an explosion for you?” I gasped, faking shock.

 

“It wasn’t broken, I keep telling them but they’re not listening,” Keith whined, drawing a passive smile from my chapped lips. Allura simply shook her head, clear exasperated, tugging him out of the room. He followed her out like a kicked puppy, a strong pout on his lips and his eyes downcast.

 

“It may not be broken, it simply picked up an anomaly but I’m sure it was nothing,” Coran clarified, hardly, and refused to speak anymore on the subject as he checked my heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, and other general health criteria.

  
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━  
  


To swear that Lance McClain was promiscuous would be a mistake. Everyone _said_ he was, by his third week at the Garrison most students, male and female alike, had claimed to have slept with him. He denied the accusations. Lance said they all _wished_ they could sleep with him but he, quote on quote, had “standards”. Pidge was the first to call BS as he flirted with even her on the rare occasion.

 

Lance still denied it though.

 

He claimed, _claimed,_ that the almighty Lance McClain was a virgin. Even Hunk, who would defend Lance to the ends of the earth, called BS on that one.

 

Keith knew. He really _knew_ that it all had to be rumor. Lance, from what he was witnessing at this very moment, within the walls of an alien castle _ship_ was much too dumb to be anything other than a virgin.

 

“Wait, _what?_ ” Lance gasped, his eyes bulging out of his head and his hand slamming uncharacteristically against the dining table, “Pidge is a girl and the castle is a ship?”

 

The rest of the ships occupants shook their heads goodnaturedly and made their way out of the room conversing familiarly. Lance, on the other hand, was frozen to the spot in shock, a bewildered expression remaining on his features. Keith snickered, something light and into the palm of his hand, as he turned away unable to hold Lance’s piercing blue gaze for much longer.

 

It had only been Allura and Coran in the room with him when it had happened. They hadn’t told Lance, not that he knew of at least and Lance didn’t even know to ask. Keith didn’t know if he should tell him or if maybe he’d just put the pieces together on his own (which he highly doubted). Maybe Allura would mention it offhandedly or Coran would bring it up to him. “Hey,” he might say, “so the cryopod picked up an anomaly when it was trying to heal you,” he’d ease into it, he wouldn’t want to worry Lance, “but you have a uterus.” Of course, neither Coran or Allura understood what this meant about Lance’s biology, but Keith did. They probably wouldn’t find this as flooring as Keith himself did when it had all happened.

 

The three of them had been talking, something that didn’t happen often but had conveniently been happening at the exact moment, sitting around the cryopod room with the beep of Lance’s heartbeat the only other noise in the room. Suddenly there were flashing lights, the beeping was harsh and loud, their attention torn form one of Coran’s many tales towards where Lance was suspended within an alien healing tube. Altean letters were scrolling across the glass spelling out something that Coran was translating in a rapidfire, hard to keep up fashion. “Cannot heal properly, make adjustments for female reproductive organs.”

 

Long story short, Lance had been outed by a piece of alien healing technology as a sex demon.

 

That was mean of him to think, it was simply a stereotype, but regardless it was the first thought that slipped into Keith’s head. This wasn’t the sort of thing he was supposed to know about Lance, it wasn’t the kind of thing you just told people. Keith knew that, _everyone_ knew that. Lance was an incubus, the most shunned species of human, and now Keith knew. Was he supposed to treat him differently? That was a dumb question, of course not.

 

Those rumors were going to mean something completely different to Hunk and Pidge, Shiro was going to be wary of him. They wouldn’t trust him anymore because Incubi couldn’t be trusted. That was the stereotype anyway. With his blue eyes and flawless skin, with his sharp tongue and seductive smile, Lance existed for nothing more than to brainwash and seduce. Keith thought differently, he told himself, but he’d never knowingly met an incubus before so it was hard for him to push the stereotypes out of his mind completely. He knew for sure that he couldn’t reveal this new piece of information to the others.

 

Of course, he also knew that nobody else was going to bring this up to Lance.

 

That’s why later that night he found himself pacing in front of Lance’s bedroom door. No one had seen him since the castle had taken off, Coran said he was probably tired from the cryopod and was resting but he’d been resting for twelve-ish hours (time was hard to keep track of in space) and Keith didn’t know if it was appropriate to knock. “I can hear you having an existential crisis out there, mullet,” rang Lance’s sultry voice as the door slid open. He stood with Pidge’s headphones around his neck, still perfectly flawless skin, in a bathrobe and matching blue lion slippers. He was adorable but Keith didn’t know if that was just his incubus charm or Keith’s gay heart. Probably both.

 

“I…” he was _not_ prepared for this conversation, “can we talk?” That, _that_ , was as equally safe to say as it was dumb. Lance was inviting him in, Lance was closing his bedroom door, Lance was patting the bed, Lance was _inviting him to sit next to him_ looking at him expectantly. Keith, in fact, had not thought a moment of this conversation through.

 

“So… what do you want to talk about?” His gaze dropped shyly to his knees and he played with the fabric strip holding his bathrobe closed, Keith was entranced.

 

“Well, funny story actually,” he groaned internally, _where am I going with this,_ he thought awkwardly to himself, “before Shiro left Earth I was his bond mate. I… uh I don’t know if you know what that is… it means that I was able to feed off of him and him off of me whenever we were together. The Garrison knew what we were, we had to submit that information legally, you know? So when he went to Kerberos, Matt was his bond mate—you know, Pidge’s brother. Shiro’s, uh, he’s an introvert so he only needs one bond mate but, uh, yeah so, I don’t really have a mate anymore..” he was screaming inside his mind as all of this tumbled out of his mouth, this was _definitely_ not where he meant to go with this, “and I know there’s a lot of stigma behind being an incubus, there’s some with being a wolf but not quite as much, but.. Oh why did I say that?” He jerked to standing and awkwardly made his way to the door. Just as his hand hovered over the control panel to leave he burst out, “I knows what you are because the cryopod outed you but I don’t want you to feel alone cause I’m not human either.”

 

Then he sprinted out of the room like an idiot.

 

Lance knew that at the Garrison he was known to be very promiscuous. He wasn’t though. He fooled around with boys, girls, and everything in between, yes, but he never slept with anybody. Contrary to popular belief, sex was sacred to succubi and incubi. Sex was how they mated, how they said _I’m going to stay with you for the rest of my life, only you, I will never cheat, I will never feed from anyone else, I will be yours and yours alone until the day I die_ and so they take the concept of virginity very seriously.

 

For an incubus to be called promiscuous was incredibly insulting. It was revolting to hear those rumors, to know not even his own friends didn’t believe him when he said he didn’t sleep with anyone. They didn’t even _know_ he was an incubus and they still thought that way. But thinking incubi were promiscuous was also commonplace. Incubi were nymphomaniacs, they lived to seduce, to ruin marriages and steal virginities, to taint and to enchant. They were built to be everybody's sexual fantasy and were to be treated like nothing more. They were degraded down to nothing more than a sex doll. That’s why incubi, more than any other species, refused to admit their heritage. Especially Lance.

 

His mother, his _birth mother_ lived up to every stereotype ever put into place for succubi. She seduced and brainwashed a married man, slept with him and slept around. She had a _baby_ with him for god sakes that she passed on the horror curse of her kind, only to die. To kill the man and to abandon the baby. Lance was horrified by his heritage. Yes, he made out with a couple beautiful people here and there, but he would never ( _ever_ ) do that to a person. Control, use, ruin. He had a power he never wanted and was forced to live with a stigma he could never escape. Even in space.

 

The other species weren’t quite as degradable as the incubi and succubi. Homo Coitus, or incubus, were the lowest. They were the sex demons, the seductrusses, the ruiners, the witches. Homo Inanis, or Cumulous, they were seen as nothing more than decomposers, able to ingest any non-living, abiotic substance. They were above _trash_ but only by default. Finally, still treated unfairly but not to the point of violent discrimination, were the Homo Lupus or Wolf. Which is what Keith, Shiro, and Matt were apparently. Maybe even Pidge too, now that Lance thought about it. Keith was a Homo Lupus Extrovert, which was a fancy way for saying he created and needed a pack, and Shiro an Introvert, he could only make one bond. He was a member of a pack, not the leader.

 

It was complicated, Lance knew this. Understanding even his own biology and culture was something that he struggled with, let alone the other species. Incubi were complicated, full of rules and stigma. He didn’t have a period, unlike Homo Sapien females, but he could get pregnant and had all the same anatomy they did. He gained energy through physical touch, the more intimate the more energy, but sex was sacred. He didn’t need to eat food, it didn’t do anything for him, but he could if he wanted to. He could control people, through empathy, telepathy. None of the other species could do that, since they each had their own special _something_. He found that it was hard to learn and even harder to control.

 

Lance knew what Keith was trying to ask, too. In some awkward Keith sort of way. That he wanted to bond to Lance, that he was tired and starved and knew that Lance was too. It sounded nice, plus he’d never known another species, he’d never had a bond mate before, he’d never had someone that he could talk to before.

 

So… there was that.


	3. Communication is Key

He wouldn’t stop knocking to the point that Keith had his face buried under his pillows and his blankets tucked up over his head. “Keith!” He yelled again, banging harsher as if he wasn’t already loud enough, “I know you’re in there Keith, you have to come out at some point. Everyone’s getting pretty worried,” he suddenly lowered his voice to a gentle whisper, “I know it’s scary but we need to talk about what you said.”

 

“Go away Lance, I don’t want to talk to you yet,” he called out, his voice muffled by the pillows. His cheeks burned from embarrassment, memories of his outburst making him groan and bury himself deeper into the bed.

 

“You’ve been in there for days Keith,” Lance whined, sliding down the door, his head banging against it, “I really need to talk to someone about this Keith, you promised that I could come to you.” He knew it was a low blow, that Lance was just trying to make him open the door out of pity. Of course, he knew that Lance knew that would work because he tumbled out of the bed and made his way to the door. Unlocking it, he watched unamused as Lance fell inside as his back rest vanished. “Gosh, give a boy some warning.”

 

“Shut up,” Keith mumbled halfheartedly. He made his was back to his bed, pulling his blankets up over his shoulders and waiting patiently for Lance to pick himself up, open the door, and come join him. “No one else knows,” Keith reiterated, shrinking nervously into his blanket bundle.

 

“Look at the big bad wolf being all shy,” Lance cooed, but it held no bite, instead he smiled kindly at Keith’s comment. He sunk comfortably onto Keith’s bed, laying down on Keith’s feet to stare up at the ceiling. They stayed like that for a while, sitting in comfortable silence. Lance remained sprawled out across Keith’s bed with his legs dangling off the edge, Keith wrapped up safely in his comforter staring intensely at the closet door in front of him.

 

“I didn’t really plan what I was going to say,” Keith said, breaking the silence. Lance sat up slowly, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands. “Everything I was thinking came out at once.”

 

“No, don’t be embarrassed,” Lance looked over at him with his big, ocean blue eyes and Keith found himself wondering if Lance knew the power he had over him, “I would be honored to bond with you.”

 

Keith was silent for a second, staring completely bewildered at Lance’s friendly smile. “Excuse me?” he squeaked out.

 

“Well, I thought that’s what you were trying to say. You know, the whole  _ I don’t have a bond mate _ thing…” Lance trailed off and looked down at his toes, “or did I read into things too much?”

 

Keith flopped onto his back, an out of character smile gracing his lips as a small giggle tumbled out. Lance McClain,  _ the _ Lance McClain, handsome, kind, beautiful, smart, wonderful Lance McClain wanted to be  _ his _ bond mate. He had reached nirvana. “ _ You _ actually want to bond with  _ me _ ?” Keith asked, his voice high pitch and his tone hesitant. Lance peaked over at Keith who was blushing and smiling like a kid on christmas, the blanket and his hair fanning out beautifully around him like a black and white halo.

 

“I would love to,” he smiled only to immediately frown, “I’ve never bonded with anyone before, I don’t know how it works... and I don’t want to tell the others about my, uh, heritage.” He looked dejected then, a grimace maring his perfectly sculpted features.

 

“No, no, Lance, that’s completely up to you,” Keith gasped out, his emotions flying every which way uncharacteristically. “Bonding works different with every species, so I don’t know how it works with Incubi... do I need to have sex with you?” His face was beat red and the second the words left his mouth he knew he was going to regret them. Lance was flushed with embarrassment and anger within seconds and it wasn’t an emotion Keith was proud to have caused.

 

“Not every stereotype you hear is true,  _ Keith, _ ” he spat out, “Incubi don’t just going around having sex. Sex is how we  _ mate _ Keith, it’s not something we just throw around to whoever we can get our slutty claws on.” Tears tickled the corners of his eyes and he frantically worked to get rid of them only for more to replace them. Keith was frozen, watching as crystal tears streaked down Lance’s cheeks, leaving sticking trails in their wakes. “I’m not a slut,” he finally choked out, breaking Keith’s heart into more pieces than he’d believed was possible.

 

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, pulling the blanket out from under himself and resting it over Lance’s shoulders. “Wolves bond by marking someone. For introverts it only works once, but I could make as many bonds as I want.”

 

“Marking someone?” Lance asked, pulling the blanket closely around his shoulders and peering over at Keith who had his usual emotionless expression on.

 

“We can use our magic to make, uh… what’s the right word,  _ markings _ ,” he cringed at his own word choice but continued on, “on whoever we want to bond with.”

 

“And mating?” Lance asked, so quietly Keith almost couldn’t hear it. A small blush rose cherry red on both of their cheeks.

 

“A permanent, physical marking left during intimacy,” he said as if reading out of a textbook. Lance’s eyes became glassy for a moment as he seemed to process this, before he blushed and smiled gently at Keith. He then nodded once, twiddling with his thumbs, looking small under the large blanket. The harsh fluorescent (or the alien equivalent of which) cast dark shadows of his long eyelashes down his cheeks, capturing Keith’s attention each time he blinked. The light caught on his caramel skin, reflecting brightly off his high cheekbones and his ocean blue eyes.

 

“Show me,” Lance whispered, gesturing vaguely towards Keith’s hands. Lance turned to face him as the lights began to dim, signaling the start of a night cycle. His eyes began to glow an electric aqua, pulsing slightly with his heart beat, lighting up the whole room with a gentle blue glow. He turned his head towards the door, his irises leaving a smokey trail in their wake, where they watched the hall lights fade to midnight too. He turned back, the blush on his cheeks taking up a purple hue under the stark ocean glow. Keith eyes, reflecting his own, glowed crimson and scarlet, magenta and maroon. Reds and violets dancing pleasantly together and leaving a purple layer of light cast over the two.

 

“We just need to completely open our magic to each other,” Keith whispered, a bright blush tinting his cheeks as well in the gentle lighting. He closed his eyes, the crimson still leaking out under his eyelashes, and focused deeply on  _ whatever _ it was that wolves focused on to bring forth their magic. The blue shadows Lance was casting on the wall behind Keith shifted as his body reminded still, fading between wolves and eagles, sharks and deer, land and ocean and sky and human. The wolves had the ability to shapeshift, an ability unique to their species. Starting with a figure Lance couldn’t make out, blurred by his thick black shirt, but directly over his heart, glowed a scarlet shape. Crawling up his neck and out across his arms, down his legs, wrapping around his body like a snake, were geometric figures. Animals Lance had never seen and creatures he could only dream up pairs with markings he could never know covered Keith’s skin in a beautiful display of pure Lupus magic. Keith, with a practiced surety, opened his eyes. He stared deep into Lance’s burning blue and purple, overwhelmed by red, met in the space between them. “Your turn.”

 

“H… how?” Lance stuttered out, floored by the beautiful yet private display Keith had just laid out for him. The lilac hue, smokey almost, that seemed to fill the room bathed them and Lance could only find himself entranced. Keith, speaking no words but offering an out of character smile, placed the palm of his hand against Lance’s chest. Within his mind, the part of him that had escaped through the tranquility the moment was setting on him, Lance found himself invading Keith’s thoughts. Words and emotions spilled into his mind depicting himself as beautiful, kind, telling him to simply feel for where his magic seemed to begin.

 

He did just that. He closed his eyes focusing on the part of himself that he kept concealed at all times. Deep within his chest was a bubble, pulsing and flexing, changing alongside his emotions and pulling at his thoughts. It was his Incubi magic. Therefore, he decided to pop the bubble, to let the water trapped within it flow. Out across his skin, bubbling through his pores and cooling the raging blush coating his cheeks. When he opened his eyes he saw his body was bathed in a thick blue smoke, pulsing and shifting between blue, pink, orange. His emotions, his aura. “Oh,” Lance squeaked, once again floored as he met Keith’s eyes. He was more alive than Lance had ever seen him, peaceful yet nervous just the same.

 

Keith raised his right hand and hesitantly placed it within Lances protective smokey coating, the colors shifting to wrapping up Keith’s arm reflecting emotions similar to Lance’s: orange, yellow, and purple. Lance was too inexperienced with his magic to know what the colors meant but some part of him instinctually told him that this was right. He raised his right hand and tightly gripped Keith’s, the animal sigils springing to life and souring onto his skin, vanishing into the smoke once they reached the crook of his elbow. By simply following his instincts he released all of the water building up under his skin into Keith and allowed Keith’s magic to fill him. All of the smoke surrounding Lance seems to suck into Keith’s skin, tumbling like waves over Lance’s shoulders and up his arm. Similarly, Keith’s animals tuck into themselves, forming little balls of light and zip along his skin playfully, running up Lance’s arm and settling like constellations against his flawless skin.

 

Then the magic is gone and the only light left was the gentle glow fading in each of their eyes, blue and red meeting in a poetic purple. “Woah,” tumbled out of their mouths in unison and corny smiles stretched dimples into their cheeks. Tentatively, a motion full of fear, Lance reached up and placed his hand against Keith’s cheek.

 

His smile dazzled Keith as their eyes seized to glow. In the darkness Lance reached up and placed his other hand where he assumed Keith’s other cheek was, missing narrowly and placing it instead against his neck. “It worked,” he murmured and Keith couldn’t help by lean his head into Lance’s clammy hands. Lance’s magic ran rampant allowing his emotions to spill fully into Keith, sadness, longing, feeling as if he didn’t belong, and hope. Hope Keith aimed to transform into happiness.

 

“Thank you,” Keith whispered to the darkness before lazily drifting off to sleep, the magical overload exhausting his every system.


	4. An Unfortunate Turn of Events

You know when you dream of falling and it scares you so badly it wakes you up? That was the sensation filling my chest at that exact moment. I wasn’t asleep, I wasn’t falling, I was sitting in the cockpit of the blue lion, watching idly as Red’s systems cut and she went dark. Every bone in my body was pulled towards the lion tumbling to the sand covered surface of the plant we were fighting to defend. I didn’t think about the phantom fear building under my sternum or the strange sensation of falling tugging at my very veins—the only thing I could think about was reaching the red lion. It was an instinctual sort of sensation that I couldn’t fight against, I knew Keith wasn’t hurt and I knew that the sand would cushion his fall, I definitely knew that he’d be safer if I were to keep fighting the Galra battleships pouring like water out of the several battle cruisers who were likely going to use his weakened state to their advantage. All of which would’ve been very important tidbits of information if I was using an ounce of though. I wasn’t. I could only hear the clear ringing of instinct.

 

“Lance,” Keith’s voice hissed over the coms, silently threatening me to not do exactly what I was about to do but I could still feel his fear and therefore his threat was kind of dry, “don’t you _dare_ try to come rescue me.”

 

It was like my very _thoughts_ were dancing around his head too. Bitch. He’d chew my head off if I went through with it now. I swiveled Blue back around, per his rude ass request (grumbling the entire time because who was he to tell me what to do) and started shooting down whatever Galra tried to get past me to even _look_ at his vulnerable ass.

 

 

* * *

 

The second I landed Blue in her hanger I knew I was going to get my ass chewed out, kicked, and then handed to me the second I decided to leave the safety that was my precious blue lion. The hanger _looked_ empty but who was I to judge a book by it’s cover. I could feel Keith positively boiling on the other side of our bond and there wasn’t a cell in my body that didn’t know how badly I’d fucked up. I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth or anything and if the hanger was going to appear so nice and empty why shouldn’t I try to escape? I took a running leap out of Blue, sprinting the best I could to the door on the far end. Somehow, even though our hangers were side by side, Keith wasn’t in mine yet. If I was dumb enough to try and abandon the battle for him I was certainly dumb enough to look over my shoulder at the door connecting our two hangers.

 

I ran face first into the cold and rather unforgiving metal of Keith’s chest plate. I looked up at him with what could only be described as pure _terror_ from my very vulnerable position on the floor and hoped he would be merciful. He knew I was going to try to run—just like he knew that I was fully planning on going to save him—and had walked his angry ass right in through my precious escape route. _“Lance!”_ I think I pissed myself in fear. “What the actual _fuck_ was that?” I could feel his white rage course through my veins; it was directed right at me and burned. I hated the feeling. Every muscle in my body was simultaneously trying to tuck me into the world’s tiniest, tightest ball while also trying to make me appear bigger so he wouldn’t try to fight me right then and there. Knowing I had disappointed him as much as I did almost hurt more than the kick to the gut I was sure to receive.

 

“I’m sorry?”

 

“Oh? You’re sorry, huh?” He leaned down and plucked me up like I weighed as much as a baby doll and slammed me into the wall behind him. I was helpless, my feet dangled inches from the ground and my hands tingled pointlessly by my sides. Leave it to my dumb incubi instincts to just _let him_ throw me around because now that we were _bonded_ I couldn’t bring myself to _hurt him_ . This was just my life, wasn’t it? “You nearly jeopardize the whole mission because you thought landing in some squishy _sand_ was going to hurt me.”

 

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone describe sand as squishy,” was my all too academic, well timed, and well thought out response. He clicked his tongue angrily at me before gently resting me back on my feet in a fashion way too out of character for me to comprehend.

 

“Don’t do it again, dumbass,” he hissed before stalking right back out the door. I think my heart stopped beating at some point but I couldn’t be too sure.

 

I whipped around the corner and scan the hallway but he’s already gone. As his anger dissipated I could feel worry, care, fear bubbling warmly in through our bond; he was scared for me. And wow did that knowledge do something to my poor frail heart. After wandering into my bedroom, out of my armor, and into my ‘normal clothes’ I instantly whisked myself away to the green lion’s hanger. Pidge had long since set up a little pile of pillows for me to relax on when I wanted to sit with her. I think she liked my presence; I fed her little bouts of calm whenever she got too worked up, or would distract her with one sided conversations whenever she needed a break. I loved listening to her talk to herself, everything she did was comforting in a homey sort of way. Who needs therapy when you can sit and watch Pidge tinker with her newest invention?

 

“You should just give him a box of chocolates and offer to suck his dick,” Pidge muttered, setting down some strangely shaped tool as she turned around to face me. She had her hands planted firmly on her hips and her lips were quirked into the evilest little smirk, devil child. “You’d have to be either blind or Keith to not notice how infatuated you are with him.”

 

“I am _not_ ‘infatuated’ with him,” and yes, I did the little air quotes and everything, “plus, I highly doubt anyone else knows.”

 

“Knows what?” She mocked, sliding into my pillow pile next to me.

 

“Shut up you gremlin,” I groaned, pushing at her shoulder with the strength of a toy soldier.

 

She laughed good naturedly and swatted at my hands. “Even Coran noticed and it took him a solid six months to notice that you’d stolen his bathrobe.”

 

“I wore it in front of him all the time too! We talked for hours and I was wearing it and he didn’t even notice!” We both laughed, cuddling up to each other in our little nest of pillows talking about all of the little things happening in our all too hectic lives until we ended up drifting off to sleep.

 

Ever since we bonded I could feel Keith’s emotions as if they were my own. Whether I wanted to feel them or not, no matter how far apart we were, if I was awake or asleep or even in the shower, it didn’t matter. I knew _exactly_ what Keith was feeling. It was nice for a while; it helped me understand him more. He wasn’t expressive or very good at expressing himself, so having a direct line into his core emotions was more helpful than not. Except when it happened to be _not_. I awoke screaming, gracefully, as the surge of emotions that very much weren’t my own moved moved through my body in a way that was rather inappropriate while I was cuddling Pidge. Lucky for me (in a nicely unlucky sort of way) my scream woke her up.

 

“I’m sorry,” I squeaked instantly as she started to rub the sleep out of her eyes, “I didn’t mean to wake you up. I think Keith’s masturbating and it scared the shit out of me.”

 

“Thanks. I didn’t want to know that. Please, for future reference, I don’t want to know how you know that or why you decided to tell me but I’d like to keep this space free of thoughts of Keith doing _that_ ,” she then pointed for the door. I took the hint and left. There goes my napping, cuddling time. For once, it _actually_ was Keith’s fault.

 

Have I mentioned that I’m a certified idiot? Somehow I found myself knocking on Keith motherfucking Kogane’s bedroom door (because this day couldn’t possible get any worse and this couldn’t possibly be a bad idea). I knew instantly it was a bad idea when a very familiar, and _very_ unwanted, sensation flooded through me. It was everything I was hoping to avoid. Thoughts that ranged from _dear god why is this happening to me_ to _thank god I’m the one experiencing this and not someone dumb like Shiro_. I knocked again. The door slid open. Keith stood rather unamused, a pair of sweatpants sitting suspiciously low on his hips, and I hated everything that was my life at that moment. “Yes?”

 

“I can feel your emotions,” I whispered, cringing with every nerve in my face because GOD _why_ was I doing this. This had to be some fever dream. I was _not_ talking to Keith right then about that goddamn subject. Please, for everything pure and holy on this ship, let me wake up in Pidge’s lab unharmed and without this conversation progressing a moment further.

 

“Good to know,” he squeaked. The door closed once again. I made my way to the kitchen.

 

“Hunk, I hate my life,” I informed him. He offered me a cookie and a glass of water—which was obviously exactly what I needed in that moment because Hunk was some sort of telepathic angel—and then went back to making dinner.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading the first chapter of this!! I'm not quite sure how many more I'm going to do but I think this is a really cool idea (and I get to invent different species so that's going to be fun).
> 
> Tell me what you think, what you like and don't like. I'm excited to really get into this and to write it how you guys want to the story to go, so if you have any ideas feel free to share!


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